At Christmas time I was surprised to find that I had been given a Nintendo 3DS, and as the weeks have gone on it's clear that it's been a very, very pleasant surprise.
I had gotten a DS and a Wii sometime before but never really played them much, there wasn't really anything on there that got me excited for whatever reason. Sure there were some obviously good games, but nothing that compelled me to turn either machine on to sit there and play with it for hours on end. This isn't the case with the 3DS though, I've been compelled not only to sit and play this machine, but also to take it with me everywhere I go. What follows is a list of some reasons why the 3DS is such a damn good machine:
1) StreetPass. This is the reason that I take my 3DS everywhere I can. When two 3DS systems come into range with each other they will interact and send each other data (assuming they have wi-fi turned on and content sharing enabled), and their Mii will appear in your StreetPass plaza. There are two games in the StreetPass plaza that utilise this feature: StreetPass Quest and Puzzle Swap. In StreetPass Quest, your Mii is captured and locked up in a cage at the top of a castle, and you are tasked with clearing rooms of enemies on the way there through turn-based combat. Whenever you have a StreetPass hit with someone, they will appear in StreetPass Quest as a hero and will aid you in battle. In Puzzle Swap, you have a variety of puzzles to complete, 1 tile at a time, and each time you StreetPass with someone, you can choose 1 puzzle tile from their collection to add to your own. You don't have to get StreetPass hits to play these games, though, the pedometer in the 3DS counts your steps and gives you coins based on how many you take, which you can trade for puzzle tiles or characters to help you in StreetPass Quest. As well as the StreetPass plaza games, you can get content for 3DS games from StreetPass including items in Super Mario 3D Land, have Street Fighter characters battle or items and levels in Resident Evil: Revelations. Even without playing the games it is exciting in itself to get StreetPass hits, each time I'm eager to find out what each Mii is like, and where they're from in the world. Every time I meet a Mii from a new country it's great to check out their country's map on the StreetPass map, most have been from Scotland so far but there's always that hope when the green LED indicating a StreetPass hit comes on!
2) Augmented Reality and FaceRaiders. These are more like tech-demos than actual games, to my mind, but they're impressive none the less. A set of Augmented Reality cards come with every 3DS, and using them with the 3DS camera allows you to play a series of games on your kitchen table, or use character cards to place your favourite characters in real life locations in a variety of poses, and take a picture. FaceRaiders takes a picture of your face and maps it onto a head shape, creating little bouncing head enemies with your face that you have to point the 3DS at and shoot. Fun for a little while, and good as a quick and fun way to show your relatives how the 3D works and looks.
3) The games. The 3DS had something of a slow start when it came to quality titles, with not too much to shout about at launch, but now there are a slew of great games to get stuck into, and a good deal more to come. I would recommend that any 3DS owner buy Super Mario 3D Land, probably the best game on the system. Ocarina of Time 3D, Star Fox 64 3D, Street Fighter IV, Mario Kart 7 and Resident Evil Revelations are also well worth the money. I've wanted to get Pilotwings Resort as well, but haven't found my way to getting that one yet. As for what's to come, it's looking good with Kid Icarus Uprising, Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D, Paper Mario 3D, Luigi's Mansion 2, Animal Crossing and an announced Super Mario 2D title to come.
Obviously there are also some bad points to the 3DS, the biggest of which I would say is the pricing of Nintendo's e-Shop, with asking prices of around £5 for some Game Boy games which hardly seems like an attractive price at all. For the most part though, the 3DS is a cracking machine and I would recommend it to anyone interested in handheld gaming.
More to come, saw some more films I'll give a quick rating eventually.
